Rhetorical Analysis Of Martin Luther King Jr

In paragraphs 12-14 King uses a combination of rhetorical strategies to argue the urgency for changing current segregation laws. Kings selective use of imagery, parallel structure, and metaphors helps bring out the emotions of the eight clergymen, making them feel sympathy and understand Martin Luther King Jr.s point of view.

Martin Luther King Jr., an American Baptist minister and a Civil Rights activist, became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He is widely known for his speech that took place on 28 August 1963, “I Have a Dream.” This speech aimed toward the entire nation. King’s main purpose in this speech was to convince his audience to demand racial justice and for them all to stand up together for their rights. In this speech, King uses emotional and logical appeal to gain the audience's support. He applied many rhetorical devices to his speech to connect with the audience’s emotions, and to logically support his arguments.

King’s speech; he puts himself in everyone else’s shoes by saying, “I am happy to join with you today.” By doing this, he captures their attention by telling them that “today will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.” Now that the audience is fully engaged, he moves towards the sole purpose of his speech. He does this by saying that after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, “100 years later the Negro still is not free.” He goes on to continue to list some of the issues which still occur today and ends his introduction with saying “now is the time” to start action. The body of his speech is primarily made up of the summarization of injustice that the African American people face. He brings up the fact that some people are unable to vote and the police brutality’s which of course support his argument. He makes it personal by giving his insight of his hopes and dreams for the future by stating that his kids will “not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” The speech’s conclusion properly reviews Martin Luther King Jr.’s points and stimulates the emotions of the audience. He does this by using the repetition of the phrase “let freedom ring” to rejoin with the audience and really emphasizes his belief of the importance of freedom and injustice. Finally, the last line of his speech, “all of God 's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and

By speaking to everyone as `his friends,' King was already pushing the notion that they were all the same. Friends tend to be of the same status and have respect for one another, King showed that although he was black and oppressed, he still was on the same level as, and had respect for his white oppositionists. Also, this same idea is supported by the fact that King chose to write the essay in first person using I and you instead of a formal third person speech. By choosing to speak this way, King puts his issues onto attainable terms and is a technique used to interest his audience and make them aware of the reality that indifference regarding racial segregation is not something that only affects others, but I, you, us, and we.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote numerous speeches in efforts to inspire the idea of non-violent protesting in hopes of eventually reaching racial equality. Under what conditions can a man with seemingly no connection to a local community step in and assume the mantle of leadership as a spokesman for a segment of that community’s population? In all of the speeches, one way or another, Dr. King used several different rhetorical devices in order to defend his own actions. In specific, two of his speeches, “I have a Dream” and “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” Dr. King used the rhetorical devices of anaphora, allusion, and diction to relay his thoughts of what is right, and also as a way to build a common ground with his audience. Though the rhetorical devices are shared between the two speeches, there are also several differences. The main difference between the two speeches is that in “I have a Dream” Dr. King is vocalizing his own ideas for what could become of the United States of America. In “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” Dr. King is responding to the clergymen’s letter regarding his braking of the law. The rhetorical devices as well as the speeches are similar, while the audience is the factor that changes the premise.

Martin Luther King Jr. uses rhetorical devices “out the wazoo” throughout his letter directed specifically at his fellow clergymen (or fellow ministers and christian leaders), otherwise known as his peers. He seems to stress many different inequities over history, specifically occurrences with the African American community. Narrowing down and focusing in on paragraph's 13-14, we can analyze his specific usage of rhetoric that justifies his argument on the timeliness and reasoning for changing the inequitable laws of segregation. King’s major usage of ethos, and especially pathos, really “hits home” in its goal to disarm the the claims opposing King’s statement, “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” This quote defines King’s goal so well to me because it clearly defines the problem as well as solution which consists of a timely journey into the seemingly unreachable depths of freedom and equality. The problem lying in the delayed justification that the laws of segregation that must be revised so that the brotherhood of the American heart may be reunited once and for all.

"I have a dream that y four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character"(Document 2).

On August 28th 1963, Civil Rights activist, Martin Luther King Jr. made his infamous “I Have a Dream” speech. In the speech, King confronts the mistreatment of the African American community and the lack of free will they contain in society. Throughout the mid-1900s, the Civil Rights Movement took place, influenced by centuries of cruelty towards the African Americans.. The most influential speech in the modern era was said in front of thousands of Civil Rights activists who all shared a common goal; to fight for the respect and to be treated as equals within the United States.

The primary purpose of Dr. King’s eloquent and dramatically delivered speech is that of persuasion. King’s claim is the Negro people are still not free one hundred years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. This warrant is supported by King’s effective emotional appeal to his African American audience. He supports this with the following: "but one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.” This is emotional because after one hundred years of oppression, the African American community has still not achieved their cultural and economic potential according to King. He is endeavoring to persuade his audience, fellow minorities and

King addresses in this quotation the reasoning behind the sit-ins and the protests that are underway in response to the discrimination that is occurring. His argument about justice is that the single injustice of the discrimination of black people at this time unhinges the idea of justice is encompassing and in this case it is not encompassing the entire population. He speaks of this mutuality between all humans, no matter the race or background of a person and this injustice is truly an injustice to everyone, whether they are affected directly or indirectly by this

After being criticized about his presence in Birmingham by white clergy in a letter published in the Birmingham newspaper, Martin Luther King sets out to not only establish why he is in Birmingham, but also to establish moral, legal and ethical cause to his platform of the peaceful protests that he has been promoted and participated in that lead to his arrest and why he is in jail. Martin Luther King establishes early on his credibility as the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and that he was in Birmingham due to an invitation as a result of organizational ties as well as a personal reason for being there due to a great injustice that prevails in Birmingham. Mr. King uses the Artistic proofs of Ethos, Logos and Pathos to establish his credibility and persuade or convince his audience in his platform.

In his speech he says, “/ […]/ Negro / […]/ finds himself in exile in his own land.” Not only does that phrase show his sympathy on Negros and their unfair treatment, but it acknowledges his audience’s emotions and leads them to have compassion towards those that do not have equality. Another example of pathos that he uses in his speech is to have emotional words to capture the hearts of his listeners such as, “shameful” “sadly crippled” “chains of discrimination” “guilty” and “hatred.” Dr. King uses these words in his speech to motivate and inspire his audience to have their voices heard in order to stop segregation. His use of pathos influences his audience/readers to make a stand for their

Martin Luther King, Jr had been a strong leader in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s and fought hard to bring an end to the Negro’s struggle to fight oppression and gain equality. When he was arrested and jailed in Birmingham, Alabama he then fell under criticism by white clergy for coming to Birmingham as an “outsider” to cause trouble and increase tension through public sit-ins and marches. I feel that Martin Luther King was able to both set aside that criticism by establishing his credibility to have not only been invited to come to Birmingham to help end the injustice to the Negro people via peaceful means, but he was able to identify moral, legal and ethical cause to promote his quest to put a stop to what he identified as “the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States.” I will provide a summary that will show what Martin Luther King believed were the cause of the injustice that he was striving to end to as well as his concern over the white community’s ability to make the Negro “wait for more than three hundred and forty years for our constitutional and God-given rights.”

First and foremost, Dr. King begins his speech by making it clear that he and the oppressed are American citizens and should be treated as such. By this statement alone, he questions the integrity of the American government and its loyal citizens. As through slavery and segregation, the Christian foundation of which America was built on has been discarded. What the founding fathers fought for and wrote in the Constitution mostly applied to white Americans. In a way, one can say that the minorities were fatherless because they did not look upon as American citizens. They were treated as the unwanted children of America and the Rosa Park bus incident which is the reason of his speech, portraits that perfectly.

Over 50 years ago, at the Lincoln Memorial Martin Luther King Jr stated, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’” Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” Speech was given due to the oppression and racial injustice of the African American people during this time and to encourage and demand their freedom. Martin Luther King is being a voice for the African American people and does this speech to convince the rest of the country that for America to move forward as a country all people of all races must be treated equally. He realizes that America is not as great a nation as it should be and wants to help America to make that next step to get there. Martin argued that this is due to the inequality between African American people and the rest of the people in America. The promises that were made earlier on when the African American slaves were first freed have not been met as far as freedom and justice. The inhumane treatment of the African American people was hindering them from being all they can be in this country. To address these issues, King believed that the people need to stand together for the rights that were given to all American people under the Constitution. Throughout his speech, ethics, emotion, and logic were used to help persuade the audience about the Civil Rights Movement. King utilized emotional appeals by bringing up the hardships that the African American people have gone through in America and logically using historical documents as evidence to show the freedoms and rights that have been kept away from African American people.